Category: Friends

Becoming an author is a wonderful experience, having the freedom to let my imagination run wild, to tell stories. I love that strange sensation when the line blurs between reality and fiction, when characters start to develop a life of their own.Read the rest of this entry »

What do you bring to dinner when the hostess says, “Just bring yourselves!”

Of course I’d bring wine…lots, but at this festive time of year it just doesn’t seem enough. A big bunch of flowers can be nice but a pain in the ass if the busy hostess has to stop what she’s doing and find a vase. Then there’s the useless knickknacks that don’t quite match the stylish interior or the high-end body wash that you stole from the overpriced hotel in New York…she knew the brand, she’d stayed there too!

Shortbread is the answer! Tastes good, looks pretty and can be served at the end of the night when the hostess can’t be stuffed trying to find something to serve with coffee! Read the rest of this entry »

Jane got a call from her friend Lorraine who wondered if we’d like to do a trip north to Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The oyster season had begun and I was more than interested. You see Lorraine Eaton is the food writer for The states main newspaper, The Virginian Pilot, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the culinary secrets of this glorious part of the world.

We’d been talking to Janes friend Tracy, asking what he was doing this Sunday, did he want to catch up? He said he was attending gospel church with his mother. Tracy described a small country parish that had seen generations of people attending church, celebrating their faith with fellowship, music and… song.

Could this be one of those churches I’d read about where the congregation bursts into song, sounding like Aretha Franklin, swaying rhythmically, responding viscerally to the music and messages of their faith? I was curious…

How do you let someone know you’d like to witness this without turning their deep spirituality into entertainment, a spectacle? But it wasn’t so complicated…Tracy simply invited us to come along. Read the rest of this entry »

We’d booked a berth at the Hamilton Island marina thinking it might be interesting to see what the place had to offer. That was at the beginning of our trip. Since then we’d been at sea for 6 nights and had settled into this boaty existence so well that we were a little reluctant to head to land.

Honestly I wasn’t expecting much… some tacky resort aging badly after its hey day in the late 80’s, overpriced beach wear, ridiculously expensive souvenirs and glitzy hotels.

Yesterday was a big wake up call. We’d raced between islands, covered vast amounts of water, sailed on very high seas for 3 and 4 hours at a time. We broke the day up by taking the dinghy to the dazzling beaches of Whitehaven, climbed to the top of the lookout, quickly checked out the national park and sped back to the place where we’d beached the dinghy. We needed to hurry if we were to reach our destination before our scheduled arrival time of 4 pm. Then, with only minutes to spare before having to set sail again, disaster struck… Read the rest of this entry »

Our friends Skip and Lulu were in the middle of their trip around Australia. Lulu had booked a charter yacht and invited us to join them. We’d arranged to meet up in Port Douglas, far North Queensland, at the very top of the country.

After 10 days lolling about on the beach, exposing ourselves to far too much alcohol, food and sun my husband and I were collected by Lulu and Skip to begin the next part of our holiday. We squeezed into their dust covered 4 wheel drive…they’d come up, thousands of kilometres, through the dry red centre of the continent (hence the dust) and were loaded up with enough gear to last the entire trip (ditto the ‘squeeze’). By nine that morning we set off on the 700 km journey down the east coast of Australia to our next destination, Airlie Beach, where we would board our yacht. Read the rest of this entry »